Prf Karen Olsson-Francis

As part of the recent UKSA business plan, funding was requested to support the continuous attendance of UK academic representatives at the COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection and enable their support of UK regulatory activity regarding planetary protection.

Consultancy contract for Professor Karen Olsson-Francis Tasks will be performed in the frame of the Mars Sample Return, Planetary Protection Re-entry safety review.

Mosquito-borne diseases have a major impact on developing countries. In 2018, there were an estimated 228 million cases and 405,000 deaths from malaria alone. DETECT will integrate satellite, air-borne and ground-based sensing to detect where mosquitoes are most likely to breed. Through satellite communications, our system will then dispatch ‘sprayer drones’ to these high-risk areas to release biocontrol agents - killing mosquito larvae without affecting other species. The Discovery Phase will co-design a community-based service with the Indigenous community of Yupukari, Guyana, and engage stakeholders from within Guyana and beyond in planning for outscaling.

ESA contract

Funding for additional work package for 1900529

The overarching objective of this project is to develop an in-situ microbial reduction technique using non-thermal plasma, evaluate its feasibility to be used in treating and storing a whole spacecraft and identify/suggest a potential operating protocol satisfying international Planetary Protection (PP) policy. Non-thermal plasma can sterilise thermally sensitive materials directly by placing a target material within the plasma discharge region without damaging surfaces [1]. Recently, we have extended the sterilisation capability of non-thermal plasma beyond its plasma discharge region for purifying water using the afterglow of non-thermal plasma through the previous UK Space Agency Exploration Technology programme (UKSAG22_0006). In this project, we will use afterglow plasma sterilisation for sterilising larger objects such as a whole spacecraft. The specific objectives of the project are to: Objective 1. Identify the system requirements by eliciting, organising, and flowing down top-level mission/user requirements. (WP1) Objective 2. Assess the feasibility of an ‘inflatable non-thermal plasma chamber’ on reducing biological burden for larger assembly or system. (Scalability, WP2) Objective 3. Evaluate the material compatibility of non-thermal plasma process for spacecraft decontamination according to the planetary protection policy. (Material compatibility, WP3

The funding from the STFC IAA is being used to strategically focus on translating our space research, developing new opportunities and providing support to foster entrepreneurialism among our researchers and academics.

Astrobiology is an emerging scientific field and is driven by the question ‘are we alone in the Universe?’ With an increasing number of life-detection/habitability missions, astrobiology is at the core of nations’ space strategies. The Open University Astrobiology Unit focuses on understanding how, and where, life might be found, by combining field work, laboratory simulations and mission data. Building on this expertise, Unit members are involved in key astrobiology-related missions and in developing planetary protection regulations. E3 funding will build capacity in line with future missions by furthering our understanding of extraterrestrial environments and potential life, through developing facilities to simulate these environments and investigating analogue sites. This is aimed at understanding if, and where, life may be found beyond the Earth. The Unit will develop its expertise to meet the new challenges that arise as the private sector and smaller nations develop exploration capacity. This includes supporting the sector to meet, and define, planetary protection requirements and to address space governance, for example, ensuring environmental sustainability of missions. The Unit will develop relevant education material for the expanding space sector, and it will work to ensure knowledge and expertise in astrobiology is used in a just and equitable manner. Sustainability of the Unit will be underpinned by commercial services, external funding, and University investment. The Unit will support the growth of astrobiology networks of industry, higher educational institutes and policymakers, and early career researchers, to ensure that the UK is globally recognised and influential within the field.

The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) provides free access to the world’s largest collection of planetary simulation and analysis facilities, data services and tools, a ground-based observational network and programme of community support activities. The project is funded through the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme and runs for four years from February 2020 until January 2024. The Europlanet 2024 RI consortium is led by the University of Kent, UK, and has 53 beneficiary institutions from 21 countries in Europe and around the world, with a further 44 affiliated partners. The project draws on the resources of the Europlanet Society to disseminate activities and outcomes and develop a more diverse community of users. Europlanet 2024 RI provides: Transnational Access to 24 laboratories in Europe and five field sites. Virtual Access to services and tools. Networking activities to support the community and provide rapid response observations to support planetary missions.

STFC Planetary Science Consolidated grant - details to be entered here.

The overall aim of this proposal is to identify volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can be used by NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery) as evidence of biological processes on Mars

STFC DTG Quota 2015-16 AMS record for students starting on or after 01/10/2015

CENTA is a geographically and scientifically coherent consortium offering a wide range of excellent NERC science embedded in a vibrant multidisciplinary environment. The Universities (Birmingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Open and Warwick) and Institutes (British Geological Survey and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) have a strong track record of producing PhD graduates fit for further research or other relevant employment. The Open University STEM Faculty has match-funded 3 studentships in the 2017 intake.

The aim of this proposal is it determine the feasibility of contemporary life existing elsewhere in the Solar System. To address this aim we will 1) investigate microbial processes that could occur in proposed transient water on the surface of Mars and in the sub-surface oceans of Enceladus and Europa and 2) assess how the geochemistry within these habitable environments would differ over geological timescales in the presence and absence of life. We will use a unique approach, which combines simulation experiments with geochemical modelling.

Our proposed research programme addresses the origin and evolution of the Solar System, including surfaces, atmospheres and physical, geological, chemical and biological processes on the terrestrial planets, the Moon, asteroids, comets, icy satellites and extraterrestrial materials, in a range of projects which address the STFC Science Roadmap challenge B: “How do stars and planetary systems develop and is life unique to our planet?” The inner rocky bodies of the Solar System are of particular importance in understanding planetary system evolution, because of their common origin but subsequent divergent histories. Lunar samples will be used to determine the abundance and composition of volatile elements on the Moon, their source(s) in the lunar interior, and processes influencing their evolution over lunar geological history. Oxygen isotope analysis will be used to determine the conditions and processes that shape the formation of materials during the earliest stages of Solar System formation. Mars is the focus of international Solar System exploration programmes, with the ultimate aim of Mars Sample Return. We will: investigate the martian water cycle on global and local scales through a synthesis of atmospheric modeling, space mission data and surface geology; assess potential changes in the composition of Mars’ atmosphere over time through measurement of tracers trapped in martian meteorites of different ages; and determine whether carbon dioxide, rather than water flow, is able to account for recently active surface features on Mars. Mercury is an end-member in the planet-formation spectrum and we plan to exploit NASA MESSENGER data to study its origin and crustal evolution, and prepare for ESA’s BepiColombo mission. The cold outer regions of the Solar System, and particularly comets, are believed to have retained some of the most pristine primitive material from their formation. We plan to probe the composition and origins of cometary material and understand the processes that drive cometary activity through: laboratory analysis of the most primitive Interplanetary Dust Particles; and direct measurements of a comet by our instruments on the Rosetta mission, together with laboratory simulations. We will conduct laboratory ultraviolet observations of irradiated ices to provide new insights into the composition of Solar System ices and how they may create atmospheres around their parent bodies. We will also investigate the role volatiles can play in the cohesion (“making”) of Solar System minor bodies, and the fragmentation that can be achieved by thermal cycling (a candidate process that “breaks” them). The question of whether Earth is a unique location for life in the Solar System remains one of the most enduring questions of our time. We plan to investigate how the geochemistry of potentially habitable environments on Mars, Europa and Enceladus would change over geological timescales if life was present, producing distinguishable biomarkers that could be used as evidence of life in the Solar System. We will study the role of hypervelocity impacts in: the processing of compounds of critical interest to habitability (water, sulfur-species, organic species) during crater formation; and the hydrothermal system of the 100 km diameter Manicouagan impact structure in Canada to assess the astrobiological implications of hydrothermal systems for early Mars. In addition to satisfying humanity’s innate desire to explore and understand the Universe around us, our research has more tangible benefits. We use the analytical techniques involved from development of space and laboratory instrumentation for applications with companies in fields as diverse as medicine, security, tourism and cosmetics. One of the most important benefits of our research is that it helps to train and inspire students - the next generation of scientists and engineers – through training within the University and public outreach and schools programmes.

This is a summer student project, under the NERC Research Experience Placement (REP) scheme. The aim of this project is to investigate the impact of the different hydrological treatments on soil microbial biomass and soil-atmosphere carbon fluxes at the RainDrop experimental site. The primary hypotheses the student will be tasked with testing are: 1) CO2 production decreases under the drier and increases under the wetter conditions; 2) methane uptake increases under the drier and decreases under the wetter conditions; and 3) CO2 fluxes are coupled to and methane fluxes decoupled from changes in microbial biomass carbon. The rationale underlying these hypotheses is that the well understood response of soil respiration to soil moisture is associated with changes in total microbial abundance in this system, as opposed to inactivation of the communities, and that methane uptake increases with drought due to greater porosity of dry soil and reduces under wetter conditions due to diffusive limitations and methanogenisis at anoxic sites in the wet soil.

The Astrobiology Society of Britain (ASB, http://astrobiologysociety.org/) is a learned society for those interested in the relationship between life and its cosmic environment, with the remit to build capacity in the UK astrobiology community. Since the inception of the Society, a series of biennial conferences have been organised to achieve this aim. The next ASB conference will take place in 2017, and will coincide with the start of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission to Mars. We seek support to host the next ASB conference at The Open University, with the intention of using the TGO mission as a central theme, highlighting the leading role the UK plays in this mission in order to encourage and inspire new research and collaborations around astrobiology-related themes. TGO will enter the orbit of Mars in October 2016. One of the scientific objectives of the payload is to search for signs of past and present life on Mars, which is fundamental to the field of Astrobiology. The next ASB conference is planned to take place when TGO is nearing the start of its science operations (following a long period of aerobraking). The ASB conference will be an ideal environment for UK scientists involved in the mission to showcase their work and excite the next generation of scientists. It will also ensure that new novel data will be presented, which will have implications on our understanding of potential life on Mars. The conference is an opportunity to bring UK researchers together from a range of disparate discipline, and will allow students and post-doctoral researchers to hear about new ground breaking research in Astrobiology and develop their own networks. Astrobiology is a multidisciplinary research area that brings together diverse fields of science for example, microbiology and physics. This highlights how important the conference is for developing networks within the UK. ASB 7 will be held at The Open University in September 2017. Key themes for the conference will include the ExoMars TGO mission, future exploration of icy moons and life in extreme environments.

The aim of our programme in Astronomy & Planetary Science at the Open University (APSOU) is to carryout detailed investigations of the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars and planets with a special emphasis on our own Solar System through a combination of observation, simulation, laboratory analysis and theoretical modelling. Our research is divided into two broad areas, reflecting the historical research strengths. This research programme is well-matched to both nationally- and internationally-agreed research imperatives. In its final report, A Science Vision for European Astronomy2, Astronet’s Science Working Group identified four broad areas of strategic importance; our research covers major topics within each of these areas. APSOU projects also map onto two of the four Science Challenges that form STFC’s Road Map3 for science (‘How did the universe begin and how is it evolving?’ and ‘How do stars and planetary systems develop and is life unique to our planet?’). The present APSOU programme comprises 20 projects (labelled A to T), of which 6 are for consideration by the Astronomy Observation (AO) panel, 1 for Astronomy Theory (AT), and 13 for the Planetary Studies (PL) panel. The AO projects cover the breadth of the 7 themes recognised as UK strengths in the report of STFC’s Astronomy Advisory Panel (AAP), whilst the 13 PL projects are directed towards answering questions raised in two of the three themes identified as UK strengths in the roadmap of STFC’s Solar System Advisory Panel (SSAP)4.